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p The new world balance of power which has prevented the aggressive imperialist forces from starting another world war is helping the campaign of progressive forces to avoid it. Local wars, acute international crises and armed conflicts, however, have occurred more than once in various parts of the world since the end of the last war. Lenin’s methodological principles of analysing wars enable us to determine the class and political content of local wars and to view them in connection with the nature and peculiarities of the epoch.

p The imperialist bourgeoisie continues extensively to use its armed forces in international relations, being unable to 140 implement its aims through a global world war and increasingly recognising the danger of such a war for the capitalist system as a whole. In the policy of contemporary imperialism, one can see quite clearly its aggressive nature, the urge to seize more territory and to commit aggression, and to suppress the world revolutionary movement by force ol arms. Examples abound: the frequent armed conflicts in the Middle East, the aggressive war against North Korea from 1950 to 1953, the wars in Algeria (1954–62) and Indochina (1946– 54), the armed intervention of the United States in Guatemala (1954) and the Dominican Republic (1965), the Israeli aggression against Arab states in 1967, the dirty war waged by the United States in Vietnam, and the US aggressive operations in Cambodia and Laos.

p After the Second World War US imperialist circles acted on more than one occasion as a world policeman, trying to suppress the popular struggle for national and social emancipation. On the admission of R. J. Barnett, Co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, the “ interventionist thrust of postwar American foreign policy, from Greece in 1947 to the Dominican Republic and Vietnam in the 1960s, has been its most striking characteristic. On an average of once every 18 months the United States has sent military and paramilitary forces into other countries either to fight guerrilla movements or to overthrow governments considered to be communist or communist leaning.”  [140•* 

p Aggressive policy harbours the threat of a thermonuclear confrontation. But as a result of the present world balance of power and the possible consequences of a nuclearmissile war, it is becoming increasingly apparent that it would be senseless to unleash another world war. In such circumstances, American military circles, while not giving up preparation for such a war, are largely relying on local wars which exacerbate international tension and create a serious threat to world peace. These wars are a direct continuation of the imperialist policy and an expression of the aggressive 141 and predatory nature ol imperialism which has not changed at all, even in the new situation.

p Imperialism bears the responsibility for these wars despite the differences in their character and scale. Indeed, the principal causes of local wars in the postwar period are either the unwillingness by the colonialists to satisfy the just national aspirations of oppressed peoples, therefore forcing them to take up arms, or attempts by reactionary imperialist forces to turn back the wheel of history and to impose a new yoke on liberated peoples, or the fanning of tribal, national, racial or religious conflicts inherited from colonial domination, or, finally, attempts to test the strength of imperialism and socialism and to reduce the positions of socialism in any particular area. Naturally enough, in individual cases all these factors can become variously intertwined.

p The aggressive policy of the reactionary forces are compelling the peoples who are struggling for national and social liberation to take up arms, inasmuch as they have no other way of satisfying their vital interests and national aspirations. The anti-imperialist wars that are developing out of popular struggles for national and social liberation, as Lenin noted frequently, are progressive and just. The Soviet Union, the CPSU and the whole international communist movement support such wars.

p Although imperialism, as before, is the principal source of the military danger, wars, as circumstances show, may arise even without its direct participation. Such wars, as, for example, the confrontations between India and Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, between China and India in 1962, and the conflicts between African states are attributable to various causes, including religious and tribal strife. Often they are used by the ruling circles of countries taking part in them for diverting popular attention from unsolved internal problems, for channelling domestic discontent to external wars.

p From the standpoint of social and class content, local wars in recent years do not differ in principle from analogous wars of previous times. Lenin’s demand for a specific historical approach to phenomena, however, retains its importance. The experience of recent years shows that in this sphere, too, certain changes have taken.place and are continuing to 142 take place under the impact of the overall shifts in the international balance of power.

p First, local armed conflicts today are acquiring much greater international resonance. Due to the intensity of contemporary international relations and the growing part they play in the life of society, local wars invariably affect the interests of a wide group of states. Suffice it to recall the important part in international affairs played by the war in Korea (1950–1953) and the war of the French colonialists against the peoples of Indochina (1946–1954) which culminated in a wide-ranging international conference with the participation of the five Great Powers and the Geneva Agreements, of the active intervention of the United Nations in the threepower aggression against Egypt in 1956 and after the attack of the Israeli aggressors against Arab states in 1967.

p The example of the American aggressive war in Vietnam, mentioned in foregoing chapters, is especially instructive. The Vietnam war has been connected virtually with every aspect of contemporary international relations.

p With the prevailing international balance of forces, the outcome of any local conflict, irrespective of the direct object of the dispute or the primary degree and the form, may be a factor capable of disturbing this balance and thereby affecting the vital interests of world forces. The direct involvement of these forces in the person of Great Powers on the side of one or the other participant in a local conflict is fraught with a danger of escalating the war and its eventual conversion into a world war.

p Many bourgeois authors indicate the danger of local wars becoming global confrontations. Professor W. Friedmann of Columbia University has written, in a book first published in 1951, of the dangerous situations and local conflicts in various parts of the world, and he comes to the conclusion that “the addition of one or two more localised wars, in which both the Communists and the anti-Communists are vitally interested, may lead to a general war by steps rather than by a sudden and dramatic explosion”.  [142•* 

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p Second, as an analysis of local wars during the past decade shows, they ultimately do not ensure that their initiators obtain their political aims, rather they sometimes bring both sides a substantial material and political loss which surpasses any material advantages or political profit.

p It is significant that no local war which has been launched by imperialist powers in recent years has been accompanied by a decisive military victory for them (if we exclude the military and political intervention by the United States in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic—and even that is debatable). They have terminated, in fact, either in “a draw”, or in the re-establishment of the status quo ante as happened, for example, in the war in Korea, or in the political compromises which have reflected the victory of the anti– imperialist forces (like the wars of the French colonialists in Indochina and Algeria). Even the six-day war in the Middle East in 1967 did not bring Israel any political gains that were commensurate with the scale of its military efforts. On the contrary: the contradictions which lay behind the ArabIsraeli conflict were not even resolved temporarily.

p Similarly, the United States was not able to gain a military victory in Vietnam despite its immense efforts and overwhelming superiority in armaments, and was forced to seek a political way out of the impasse.

p The numerous recognitions by American politicians and publicists are witness to this situation. The former US representative at the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg, said in 1967 that the Vietnam war could be likened to a black cloud hanging over many countries as well as over the United States and that the Vietnamese issue had become one of the most insoluble of problems. In criticising the mistakes of the American administration, Walter Lippmann describes the Vietnam war as a war that cannot be won. The editor of Foreign Affairs, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, is of the same opinion.

p With the present world balance of power, superiority in armaments, and, particularly, the nuclear power of the United States and other countries, has practically lost its importance as an instrument of resolving local conflicts. Local anti-imperialist forces (the national liberation movement and 144 the young national states), relying on socialist support, can successfully fight against both the unstable puppet regimes and the American forces operating on land thousands of miles away from the United States. The moral and political factor has overriding importance in this respect. The peoples of Korea, Algeria and Vietnam have waged a just liberation war for their freedom and independence which has given them tremendous advantages over the aggressors, who have pursued predatory and imperialist aims.

p The real facts which Lenin described as “not only stubborn things, but undoubtedly proof-bearing things”,  [144•*  are compelling contemporary imperialist politicians to renounce military action in a number of cases and more widely to resort to other means of attaining their ends. An indication of the trend towards a review of American military and political doctrines is the announcement by J. de S. Pool, Chairman of the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former member of the Department of Defence Science Board, that “in general, we have to find ways of coping with international problems that minimise the use of force. .. . The instruments we must use better are largely money, propaganda, political organisation, and intelligence.”  [144•**  Similar views have been voiced by President Nixon’s Special Assistant Henry Kissinger, who believes that in relations with countries that have a weak internal structure, a radio transmitter may be a more effective form of pressure than a squadron of B-52 strategic bombers.

p The bridge-building doctrine in relation to socialist states in Eastern Europe and the increasing use of neo-colonialist methods in relation to Asian and African countries testify to a certain modification of imperialism’s foreign policy strategy as applied to the new situation.

p Nonetheless, postwar experience provides every basis for the conclusion that imperialism has not altered and cannot alter its aggressive nature, that it is renouncing the use of arms only under the pressure of the objective international situation and is invariably resorting to arms when it sees the 145 slightest gain from doing so. No matter how ultimately futile such a policy might seem for the most aggressive circles of imperialism, this does not diminish its danger in so far as it could bring many losses and great suffering to the peoples and could lead mankind to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe and, in certain circumstances, could even push it into the abyss. The interests of the US military and industrial complex are acting in that direction.

p It is therefore in the interests of all progressive forces to prevent the imperialists from starting local wars; the resolution of that task depends primarily on the strength of socialism and the other anti-imperialist forces, on their watchfulness, activity and unity.

p The overall alignment of forces in the world and the balance of power between the two systems ultimately determine also the new understanding of the issue concerning the possibility of war between imperialist countries. Wars like those which dominated history at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries and led to the First and Second World wars, have not arisen since the end of the last world war. The thesis of the inevitability of war between capitalist countries that was advanced in the early 1950s has not been borne out in international relations. Theoretically, the possibility exists, of course, but with the continued existence and strengthening of world socialism and of all antiimperialist forces, the probability of war between imperialist countries has greatly diminished.

The ruling classes in the capitalist world have to reckon with the lessons of history and the realities of the present. No longer can the imperialists ignore the fact that war between them today, irrespective of its results, would objectively weaken the capitalist system as a whole and would confront the belligerents with the prospects of very sombre social and political consequences. In that respect, the experience of the Second World War which began with armed struggle between capitalist countries and culminated in considerable expansion of world socialism has not been lost on the present-day imperialist leaders. Winston Churchill, one of capitalism’s greatest leaders in the first half of the 20th century, called that war “an unnecessary war”.

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p The new understanding of the issues of war and peace— the possibility of averting new world wars, the relative diminishing of the effectiveness of local wars as a means of gaining one’s political ends and the slight likelihood of inter-imperialist wars—by no means implies that the problems of war and peace have diminished in importance in the overall complex of modern international relations, including these relations in peacetime. Rather the opposite is the case.

p First of all, the military-political and military-strategic factors are playing an increasingly important part in the foreign policy of individual states. Although, on the whole, military strategy continues to be subordinate to the political, the link between the two has today become closer and more complicated, and military strategy is exerting a mounting influence on foreign policy. The issue of allies is an illustration of this. It is not simply that, in deciding this question, strategic interests have to be taken into account along with political considerations; one must remember that allied relations today often presuppose a far-reaching military co-operation ( standardisation of armaments, and co-ordination of military command, not to mention the direct integration of armed forces or parts of them). This creates a fairly firm interdependence which has an altogether independent significance and affects the settlement of political and economic issues. In this connection, it is important to draw attention to the place which military factors occupy, and particularly the question of nuclear weapons, both in relations between the two systems and in inter-imperialist relation, e. g., the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The foreign policy editor of the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, Karl Emil Hagelund, says: “Our hands are bound by military considerations. And these considerations, it would seem, arise without the slightest account for what is happening on the political front.”  [146•* 

p In the second place, one more manifestation of the growing importance of the problems of war and peace today is the influence on the economy and the social situation, and on foreign and home policy of the arms race, the large size of armed forces and the growth in military expenditure. In 147 the United States, for example, military expenditure, which in 1965 had made up 8 per cent of the GNP, rose in 1968 to 9.2 per cent which, in per capita terms, was $396. The total of military expenditure by NATO countries in 1970 was in excess of $103,000 million and is continuing to grow. Changes in our understanding of the issues of war and peace today are also apparent in the prominence of the disarmament problem in the activity of international organisations and in the ideological struggle in the world arena. Socialism and the Soviet Union deserve credit for the way this question has been posed on a wide scale and in a principled manner, the way they have mobilised all peace-loving forces to settle this question. Remaining true to the Leninist policy, the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries which take up a Marxist-Leninist stand have launched a vigorous campaign for disarmament since the last world war. At the First Session of the Seventh USSR Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Government stressed: “The Soviet Union proceeds from the fact that the disarmament struggle is not a tactical ploy, it is a principled policy and an inalienable part of Soviet foreign policy.”  [147•* 

p The foreign policy initiative of socialist countries on disarmament has, in recent years, done a lot to bring about the first real steps towards disarmament and detente. One important achievement of the peace policy was the Moscow Treaty signed on August 5, 1963, by three nuclear powers, and which now contains the signatures of over 100 states.

p In the complex international situation of recent years, and in the situation of continuing tension caused by American aggressive actions, the Soviet Union and other socialist countries have not wavered in their fight for disarmament and for agreements on separate, partial measures aimed at easing international tension and the arms race. After lengthy negotiations, a treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, which was designed to lessen the danger of a nuclear war, was signed in 1968. Soviet-American talks on the limitation of strategic arms began in 1970, and they led to the signing in May 1972 of a Treaty on the Limitation of 148 Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems as well as an Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. Thus, in effect, for the first .time in history, agreement was reached on materially limiting these modern and most powerful types of weapons. Recognition and strict observance of the principle of equal security of the sides are an important precondition of success in this sphere. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological, Biological and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, drafted on the initiative of socialist countries, was signed on April 10, 1972.

p On the initiative of the Soviet Union, the 27th UN General Assembly in 1972 passed a resolution on the renunciation of force in international relations and banning the use of nuclear weapons for all time. The Soviet Union has expressed its readiness to carry this UN decision a step further by coming to an agreement with any of the nuclear powers on mutual undertakings not to use force, including nuclear weapons, against each other.

p “The struggle for an end to the arms race, both in nuclear and conventional weapons, and for disarmament—all the way to general and complete disarmament—will continue to be one of the most important lines in the foreign policy activity of the CPSU and the Soviet state,” the Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 24th Party Congress states.  [148•* 

p If we sum up the part being played by the military factor in modern international relations, we may note two interconnected trends. On the one hand, there is the vast growth in destructive power of weapons, the unparalleled arms race and the increase in importance of military and political factors in all sectors of international relations, the activisation of aggressive forces and the increasing threat of war. On the other hand, there is the increasingly marked danger, the irrationality and the “unprofitability” of the arms race and the use of the latest types of weapons, a reduction in the effectiveness of conventional armaments and, 149 correspondingly, the enhanced role of other methods of foreign policy and the mounting influence of the forces of peace.

Socialist foreign policy is fighting for the implementation of the historic task, put forward by the CPSU and the world communist movement, of averting a world thermonuclear holocaust. It combines a firm rebuff to aggression with a constructive policy towards the settlement of immediate international problems, and consistent adherence to the Leninist principle of peaceful coexistence of countries with different social systems.

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